Nana Ellen’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup shortening

Add:

1 tsp. vanilla
2 large eggs

Beat until fluffy, then add:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
Mix very well and stir in:

2 cups chocolate chips
use semi-sweet or dark chocolate

Drop by spoonfuls on a cookie sheet and bake 12 to 15 minutes.

HINTS:

Use the best brand of real vanilla extract you can afford.

Spend the time to thoroughly cream the butter, sugar and eggs until they are light and fluffy…it makes all the difference in the finished cookies.

Don’t use fancy flour. I’ve learned by trial and error, if I want things to taste like they did when Auntie made them, the flour needs to be plain old white, unbleached flour…no additives…or as few as I can find in today’s market.

Auntie & Uncle Carl
– Summer 1945
Longmont, Colorado

If you want to bake the entire batch place the first baking sheet of cookies on a rack in the middle of your oven, while you’re filling the next sheet. When the second sheet of cookies is ready to bake, move the first tray to an oven rack close to the top of your oven to finish baking.

Add the third tray when the first one is done (usually about 12 to 15 minutes in my oven). Watch the time and watch the cookies. They can get too brown very quickly. They’re not so yummy when they get too brown.

If you’re family is like us, a whole batch of cookies is simply too many at one time. So.. I bake one tray, and freeze the rest to be baked fresh whenever we want hot cookies. The dough will keep in your freezer for a month or two. Much better than eating stale cookies that have been sitting around for a day or two.

These bags of frozen cookies make a nice gift for a visiting grand kid or a shut-in neighbor.

Depending on your tastes you can add a cup of chopped nuts to these cookies. I have used pecans, walnuts and….

When I feel really adventurous, I use macadamia nuts and white chocolate pieces in place of the dark chocolate. YUM!!!

Gather your ingredients and pre-heat the oven to 375° F
Let the ingredients come to room temperature.
Yes, the eggs, too.
Measure the butter, shortening, and sugar into the mixer bowl.

and cream them together until the sugar is absorbed
and the whole thing looks like this.

Then add 2 teaspoons of GOOD vanilla and two eggs.

Now cream them until they are light and fluffy.

Light and fluffy means…light and fluffy.
Kinda like stiff peaks of whipped cream
Now, measure 3 cups of unbleached white flour,
1 teaspoon of salt and
1 teaspoon of baking soda
into the bowl, right on top of the fluffy stuff.

Notice we’re now ten minutes into the process, so you can see I spent awhile getting to the light and fluffy stage.
Turn the mixer on low ‘n’ slow and mix in the dry ingredients until they are fully incorporated. The mixture will be sticky.
Now dump in the chocolate chips – these are dark chocolate – and gently mix the throughout the dough.

Line your cookies sheets with foil, and drop the dough on them by spoonfuls, spacing the cookies about two inches apart.
Bake at 375 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes.

Now here’s where the job becomes all about you and your family’s capacity for cookies. We can’t eat the entire batch right away, so I bake a pan (20 cookies) and freeze the rest.

Just line another baking sheet with wax paper and line up the little balls of dough like you were gonna bake ’em. Pop the tray in the freezer overnight. In the morning, put the frozen cookies in a plastic bag in your freezer until the next time you get a hankering for hot cookies.

There ya go! Grab a glass of milk and enjoy!